African National Congress (ANC): Attainment of Power, Post Liberation Phases and Current Crisis
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African National Congress (ANC): Attainment of Power, Post Liberation Phases and Current Crisis ∗ Raymond Suttner The ANC has emerged as the electorally overwhelmingly dominant force in South Africa, conforming to what is referred to as a “dominant party” although the organisation describes itself as a liberation movement rather than a political party. Successive elections have seen increase in that support and dissolution or decrease in the support for opposition parties, associated in varying degrees with apartheid, with the strongest party the Democratic Alliance (DA)1 able to operate merely as an irritant with no prospect of ever attaining power. This is the focus of “dominant party” theorists who claim great dangers to democracy to lie in the electorally apparently unchallengeable situation. In earlier papers I have rejected the notion that the unlikelihood of ANC dominance being electorally challenged in the foreseeable future signifies the failure to consolidate democracy. I have argued that the need for a “circulation of elites” on a regular basis, as a condition for democracy, is nothing but a dogma emerging from people who claim expertise, but have no scientific basis 2 for their argument. ∗ Raymond Suttner is a Senior Researcher in the Walter and Albertina Sisulu Heritage and Knowledge Studies Unit, School of Graduate Studies and Research Fellow in the History Department, in the College of Human Sciences, at the University of South Africa, Pretoria. He is a former activist and political prisoner under apartheid. He has published widely in a number of disciplines, most recently 50 Years of the Freedom Charter (with Jeremy Cronin, 2006). A work entitled Rendering Visible on underground organisation is currently under consideration for publication as a book. E-mail: [email protected]. 1. While the Party originates from the Progressive Party, a breakaway from what had been J.C. Smuts’s United Party, it gradually moved to the right absorbing remnants of the United Party as it gradually eroded and later dissolved and in recent times it has also absorbed many former Nationalist Party politicians. While it calls itself a liberal party, it is more conservative than the earlier liberalism of the 1950s and it evokes considerable ambivalence in regard to transformational issues. 2. R. Suttner, “Democratic consolidation in South Africa: the advice of the ‘experts’”, Current Sociology, 52, 5, 2004, pp 755-774; R. Suttner, “Party Dominance ‘Theory’: of what value?”, Politikon, 33, December 2006, pp 277- 298. 1 The focus in this article is on the conditions under which that dominance was established and the current crisis which may signify the long-term vulnerability of the ANC as an all-powerful unified organisational force. Neither the rise to dominance nor the threats to the organisation are treated as electoral phenomena in the main. They are analysed within the context of wider political factors which influenced the evolution of the organisation or internal dynamics which are threatening its very existence. Even if the current divisions were to lead to an implosion of the organisation, what would take its place and with what consequences for democracy is by no means clear. The ANC’s rise to being the dominant political force was by no means pre-ordained. For many periods of its history it was close to dormant and its existence was not manifested in patient organisation, as had been seen in the Communist and trade union movements.3 The existence of the ANC as an organised force is a relatively late phenomenon, from the 1940s, just prior to the emergence of the ANC Youth League.4 The ANC had a very short period as a legally structured and managed organisation due to the disruptions caused by the Treason Trial of 1956-19615 and its banning in 1960. Prior to the ANC’s unbanning in 1990, it now appears (though many activists and even leaders were not fully aware of this at the time) that there were divergent expectations about how the transition would unfold. Consequently while some may have been quite unprepared for the actual outcome, others may well have envisaged this for some time. On the one hand from the mid 1980s the ANC called on the people of South Africa to “make apartheid unworkable and South Africa ungovernable”.6 They also called for the displacement of apartheid 3. S. Dubow, The African National Congress (Jonathan Ball Publishers, Johannesburg, 2000), p xiv; R. Bernstein, Memory Against Forgetting. Memoirs from a Life in South African Politics. 1938-1964 (Viking, London & New York, 1999). 4. See P. Walshe, The Rise of African Nationalism in South Africa. The African National Congress, 1912-1952 (C. Hurst, London, 1970), pp 256-258, regarding the role of Canon James Calata and Doctor A.B. Xuma in creating an organisational base. 5. This trial was mounted in response to the Congress of the People which adopted the Freedom Charter in 1955. Initially 156 people were charged and the numbers were later reduced to 30, all ultimately being acquitted. 6. ANC [African National Congress], “Render South Africa Ungovernable! Message of the National Executive Committee of the African National 2 institutions by organs of popular power and indeed, such organs were established in many parts of the country.7 The sense that the apartheid government was not able to re-establish governability, its own incapacity to successfully defeat or counter the forces of resistance, was coupled with encouragement from the ANC and South African Communist Party (SACP) to develop an insurrectionary climate. In fact, Operation Vula mounted in the mid 1980s was aimed at connecting internal and external forces more effectively than had been the case in the past and it was an underground operation with a degree of sophistication that had not previously been seen.8 The impact of the Vula operation was tangible. Until the late 1980s it was very difficult to obtain illegal literature, especially the much prized anniversary statement of the ANC. But Vula changed things, in that on 8 January 1989, many people received the ANC’s annual anniversary statement on their doorstep side by side with the daily newspaper. There was then within the country an insurrectionary mode of operation with mass activity of a variety of kinds, MK9 activities and the building of underground machinery. This coexisted with legal activities 10 of the United Democratic Front (UDF) facing increasing repression. Congress on the 73rd Anniversary of the ANC. January 8 1985.” http://www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/history/or/or85-1.html, accessed on 16 July 2006. 7. ANC, “From Ungovernability to Peoples [sic] Power - 1986, ANC Call to the People.” http://www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/history/ungovern.html, accessed on 16 July 2006. See also M. Neocosmos, “From Peoples’ Politics to State Politics: Aspects of National Liberation in South Africa”, in A.O. Olukoshi (ed), The Politics of Opposition in Contemporary Africa (Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, Uppsala, 1998), pp 195-241; R. Suttner, “The UDF Period and its Meaning for Contemporary South Africa: Review Article”, Journal of Southern African Studies, 30, 3, 2004, pp 691-702; R. Suttner, “Legacies and Meanings of the United Democratic Front (UDF) Period for Contemporary South Africa”, in C. Hendricks and L. Lushaba (eds), From National Liberation to Democratic Renaissance in Southern Africa (CODESRIA, Dakar, 2005), pp 59-81. 8. Interview: P. Gordhan, Pretoria, 2003, transcription and tape in possession of the author; C. Braam, Operation Vula (Jacana, Bellevue & Johannesburg, 2002). 9. MK is the abbreviation conventionally used to refer to the military wing of the ANC, uMkhonto we Sizwe, meaning the Spear of the Nation. 10. R.M. Price, The Apartheid State in Crisis. Political Transformation in South Africa, 1975-1990 (Oxford University Press, New York & Oxford, 1991); S. Mufson, Fighting Years. Black Resistance and the Struggle for a New South Africa (Beacon Press, Boston, 1990). 3 At the end of the decade in 1989, the SACP adopted an insurrectionary programme at a congress held in Cuba, chaired by Thabo Mbeki.11 In other words, the Communist delegates like many ANC soldiers in the camps and inside the country believed that the overall goal was to seize power by revolutionary means. Yet at the same time, without the knowledge of most of these delegates and even some or most members of the leadership of the ANC12, negotiations were beginning, parallel processes between former President Mandela and his jailers inside and outside the country, through the facilitation of the intelligence services, meetings between certain government figures and ANC leaders like Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma.13 Why the involvement of the apartheid intelligence services? On the side of the apartheid regime, prior to the formation of the National Intelligence Service (NIS), post 1960 intelligence was mainly police- related. It was connected to securing convictions or capturing people who were seen as ringleaders in an attempt to undermine the apartheid system. The social order itself did not come into question. This was the case with Republican Intelligence, the predecessor to BOSS (the Bureau 11. SACP [South African Communist Party], The Path to Power. Programme of the South African Communist Party (Inkululeko Publications, London, 1989). 12. V. Shubin, ANC. A view from Moscow (Mayibuye Books, Bellville, 1999), for example at p 326 where he quotes Chris Hani raising his concern. 13. A. Sparks, Tomorrow is another country. The inside story of South Africa’s negotiated settlement (Arrow Books, London, 1997); P. Waldmeier, Anatomy of a miracle. The end of apartheid and the birth of the new South Africa (Penguin Books, London, 1997). See the recently published work, J. Sanders, Apartheid’s friends. The rise and fall of South Africa’s secret service (John Murray, London, 2006), chapter 14.